If your only going to fish a little I'd buy manuals. It s the only exercises I get trolling . They are simple and always start.........excuse my humor. As for good manuals. I like the Cannons and I own Penns. If I had to choose I'd by Cannons. The swivel bases for Penns are just ridiculously expensive for a glorified piece of plastic . Cannons are not much better but the engineers had a good Idea for a place a hook to stow the ball on the boom arm..... A modification I plan to implement on my Penns. When I'm rich and famous I'll get some electrics on a new C-Dory until then I'm really ok with the manuals.
Chris